Tag Archives | Rituals

Satanists, aliens, or sociopathic sadists? One of these is at the heart of a gruesome mystery lurking within a valley of the Rocky Mountains. Via the Denver Post:

Recent livestock mutilations have Gunnison area ranchers shaken and on the alert for more strange attacks on cattle and horses.

A horse was shot and had its head skinned at the LeValley Ranch property, about eight miles east of Gunnison. The horse also had its tongue and anus removed. Less than two months ago, a prize heifer in the same heavily traveled area had its tongues, lips and anus removed. Two other incidents took place on other ranches in that vicinity in May and July.

“To me it looks like a ritualistic issue. Either that, or they are high on drugs. There is just no logical explanation for it,” said Esty Ranch owner Mike Clarke.

The recent mutilations have similarities to mutilations that occurred in the 1960s in neighboring Saguache County.

To find out how people rate the effectiveness of magical rituals, Legare and graduate student André Souza conducted a study in Brazil, a country suffused with rituals called simpatias. Used for solving problems as varied as quitting smoking, curing asthma and warding off bad luck, simpatias are formulaic rituals that involve various steps and repetition.

The psychologists presented 162 Brazilian respondents several versions of these rituals. Each was modified with different characteristics, such as repetition of procedures, number of steps, number of items used, and the presence of religious icons.

As part of the study, Legare asked the respondents to rate the effectiveness of each ritual. According to the findings, three elements of the simpatias had the biggest influence: number of steps, repetition of procedures and a specified time.

Dabbling in the spirit world should be a part of every curriculum. Via the New York Daily News:

Florida teacher Danielle Harkins, 35, brought seven teens to a spot by the pier in St. Petersburg on Saturday, and began the strange religious ritual by starting a small fire, police told WTSP News. The teacher then told the teens to cut themselves to cast out demons lurking in their bodies, and cauterize the wounds to prevent the spirits from returning, investigators said.

“There was apparently some chanting and then dancing around this fire that was taking place,” St. Petersburg Police Department spokesman Mike Puetz told Fox Tampa Bay.

Two kids were cut, and one sustained second-degree burns after the teacher allegedly poured perfume on his wound and lit it with a cigarette lighter. One of them was cut in the neck with a broken bottle and the wound was cauterized with a heated-up house key.

A “serpent-handling” West Virginia pastor died after his rattlesnake bit him during a church ritual, just as the man had apparently watched a snake kill his father years before.

Pentecostal pastor Mark Wolford, 44, hosted an outdoor service at the Panther Wildlife Management Area in West Virginia Sunday, which he touted on his Facebook page prior to the event.

“I am looking for a great time this Sunday,” Wolford wrote May 22, according to the Washington Post. “It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good ‘ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers.”

Robin Vanover, Wolford’s sister, told the Washington Post that 30 minutes into the outdoor service, Wolford passed around a poisonous timber rattlesnake, which eventually bit him…